Holy crap, you guys, television is going insane! I don’t know if it was True Detective or Fargo, or Hannibal or Sherlock, but something really got that movie star to television train rolling full steam ahead, and hot damn, Anthony Hopkins is going to be popping right into our living rooms every week. Hannibal the *true* first and Hannibal the Mads will both be on our TVs at the same time. Okay, I know I sound like a rabid animal or something, but this is exciting. I was already pretty hopped up over the fact that J.J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan were working on the series reboot of Michael Crichton’s 1973 film. For those of you who haven’t seen it (please remedy that a.s.a.p.), the science fiction/western mash-up starred Yul Brynner, James Brolin and Richard Benjamin, and imagined a future where rich vacationers could live out their fantasies in an adult theme park world of their choosing. The fantasy worlds were staffed by androids, and as we all know, anything involving androids usually winds up being problematic; Westworld was no exception. I’ll leave off there so as not to blow the whole caboose.

Hopkins will star as Dr. Robert Ford, “the brilliant, taciturn and complicated creative director, chief programmer and chairman of the board of Westworld, who has an uncompromising creative vision for the park — and unorthodox methods of achieving it.” Evan Rachel Wood co-stars as Dolores Abernathy, “the quintessential farm girl of the frontier West — who is about to discover that her entire idyllic existence is an elaborately constructed lie” (which I’m taking to mean she’s actually an android). Deadline says James Marsden is also in talks for “a major role.”

Jonathan Nolan has already co-written the pilot; he’ll direct, and executive produce along with Abrams (and Jerry Weintraub, Bryan Burk, and others). HBO programming president Michael Lombardo recently called the Westworld script “…one of the most exciting scripts they’ve seen in some time,” and guys…I am so damned excited.